


Notebook

by softlybarnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 01:27:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12877263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlybarnes/pseuds/softlybarnes
Summary: Bucky and Y/N sit next to each other all semester. They never talk to each other, until one day they do.





	Notebook

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys like it! It’s an idea I’ve been thinking about for a while. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading! ❤️❤️❤️

It’s been an entire semester.

One _whole_ semester.

_Sixteen weeks!_

And still, Y/N hasn’t been able to talk to the cute guy that always seems to sit next to her. Its college so it’s not like there’re assigned seats. Yet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday there he is. In the same seat as always. Once she even caught him move his stuff from the seat beside him when he saw her approaching, apparently having saved it for her.

Y/N has never managed to talk to him, her nerves getting the better of her. She hates that she can be silenced so easily, by something as stupid as her own consciousness sealing her lips closed forever. But then again, he’s never talked to her either. Maybe he saved the seat for her occasionally and always sat next to her when given the choice because he knew she didn’t talk to him, or smell bad, or do something annoying like crunch ice cubes in class like the girl a few rows ahead of them always seemed to do.

Whatever it is, he’s always silent.

Y/N knows more about him than she cares to admit. She knows he’s an ex-soldier, a nontraditional student working toward a degree in Literature and History. And yet he always seems to be drawing next to her. He draws people, their professor, dogs, someone’s bedroom. But he also draws the layout of their campus, the floorplan of an apartment, molecular structures. Some days he’ll sketch out the periodic table or do pages worth of complicated mathematical problems, his neat handwriting looking almost like art. He dots out constellations and on the next page will be design plans for some sort of complicated looking communications device.

He never seems to be paying attention and yet every exam he gets back has a perfect grade etched at the top.

Y/N wonders often how this genius ended up next to her in her Literary Criticism class. Because he has to be a genius. He _has to be_. There’s just no other explanation for his mastery of seemingly everything.

It’s their final class meeting of the semester and just like every other time, Y/N takes her seat in the usual spot and pulls out a book. She’s just started reading when her quiet companion arrives. He sits down silently and doesn’t glance at her as he pulls out a notebook. When he opens it today there are series of complicated diagrams accompanied by complex math problems. She thinks it might be physics but she isn’t really sure. It’s not really her area of expertise after all.

Y/N resumes reading after staring at his steady hand for far too long. His hand is nice. Pale, slender fingers grip the pencil carefully. His palm is large but rough, calloused and scarred. Was is odd to be attracted to someone’s hand? Y/N doesn’t much care. She thinks all of him is rather lovely.

He’s broad shouldered and muscular, his thighs always seem to be straining against the fabric of his jeans. And even as large as he is, he always seems to move with a ballerina’s grace. She would bet he had been a phenomenal athlete at one point in his life.

The only possible defect one might be able to find with the stoic man would be his lack of a left arm. His left sleeve is always tied off and loose. Y/N doesn’t care and in fact is a little bit morbidly curious about how he lost it. He always sits with his right side closest to her, whether from self-consciousness she doesn’t know, and so she has a perfect view of whatever he happens to be working on at the time.

Y/N chances a glance back over at his hand, still scratching down numbers and formula she can’t even begin to hope to understand. Suddenly his hand pauses and then he tilts the notebook toward her. She freezes, eyes wide, and watches as the slender artist’s fingers draw a smiley face.

Next to that he scrawls the word _Hello_. She glances up from the word and finds intense blue eyes already looking at her. He smiles and holds out his pencil to her. Y/N takes it and quickly writes down a message as embarrassment sweeps through her veins. Surely he’s calling her out, a subtle ‘stop looking at my shit’.

 _Sorry_ , she writes, _I didn’t mean to be creepy_.

She doesn’t look at him as she lies his pencil down and tries to hide her mortification. The professor enters the lecture hall then and Y/N goes about pulling out her own notebook, wondering if it was too late and obvious to move seats.

Something pokes her softly in the arm, grabbing back her attention as the professor reminds them of the due date of their final paper. He’s holding the pencil out to her again, shaking it with urgency in her direction. Glancing down she finds a hastily scribbled message next to a neat diagram.

 _No_ , he’s written. _I know you weren’t being creepy._

She holds the pencil cautiously above the paper, unsure how to respond. What does he want then? She’s too shy and nervous and embarrassed to look up and see if he’s still looking at her.

So, not paying attention to him, she jumps when he pulls the pencil back out of her hand and begins writing something else.

_I’ve been trying to find some way to talk to you all semester. And we’re at the end now. I would regret it if I didn’t say something to you._

Y/N glances up to find his gaze on her again when he looks down and starts to write something else. _I’ve been reading the novel you seem to have in your notebook over your shoulder. I want to know what happens to the ballerina and the soldier._

Watching the words appear slowly, one at a time, she feels a smile tug at her lips. _I think that makes me the creep,_ he writes.

Y/N hastily uncaps her pen and scribbles back. _I don’t see how you could follow my story when you’re over there mastering every subject known to man._

Quickly he flips the notebook to a new page and writes back. _Does that mean you’ll tell me what happens?_

Her mouth quirks into a quick smile as she writes, _I’ve been trying to talk to you all semester too._ And then she picks up her notebook and hands it to him.

He looks like a kid in a candy shop and flips through the pages, finding his place in her work. Y/N tries to pay attention to the lecture, she really does, but she can’t seem to focus.

Not with the person she’d quietly been pining over all semester reading her work in progress, seemingly devouring it as if it’s the best thing he’s ever read. It’s the last lecture of the semester anyways, she reasons. Fifty minutes later the class is dismissed but Y/N stays put when he doesn’t move, still reading, eyes flashing hungrily across the page.

Y/N doesn’t mind. She doesn’t have anywhere else to be and she knows from experience that there are no more classes in this room after theirs.

Finally, after twenty more minutes, he looks up. He looks like a man coming out of a trance. “So what happens?” He asks. “Do they get together? Does the soldier ever get back to himself? Does the ballerina ever learn to accept that the soldier’s different?”

“Well,” Y/N says, tucking some hair behind her ear as she ducks her head, unable to believe they were finally talking. “I haven’t finished yet.”

“But you’re the author,” he says, handing the notebook back to her, “Shouldn’t you know?”

“I do know.”

He smiles, “But you won’t tell me.”

Shaking her head, she says, “It’s not on paper yet.”

He nods and stares ahead, tapping his pencil against one of his spread thighs, seemingly lost in thought. Jolting suddenly, he glances back over at her. “I’m sorry. I’m being rude.” He holds out his hand. “I’m Bucky.”

And now she has a name to put to a face. “Bucky,” she tries it out on her tongue. “I’m Y/N.”

“I know,” he says. “Saw it on one of your papers.” He shakes his head and stares down at his boots. “You’ve done really well with the characters,” Bucky says. “The soldier…do you know someone with PTSD?”

For a moment she thinks maybe she’s offended him. But he only looks curious when his blue eyes meet hers again. “No. I mean I used to.” She says, not looking away from him. “He came home and he wasn’t the same. My best friend. Signed up right after high school.”

“You got the feeling exactly right,” he praises her. “I’ve been back for almost two years and…most days are still really hard. It took me a whole semester to write a note to you. Before,” he rolls his eyes and leans closer to her, “I would have made obnoxious conversation almost as soon as you sat down next to me.”

“Instead,” she teases. “You read my writing.”

His smile is soft when he says, “And you looked at what I was doing too.”

“Only because you’re _clearly_ a genius.”

“How do you figure that, sweetheart?”

Completely flustered she waves a hand in his direction and stutters at him a little before getting her bearings, “You-you know everything! You do physics one day and complex math the next and then your drawings are so lifelike and…it’s all so good. You design things, I mean…I’ve been wondering who the hell you are.”

“But I could never write like you do.”

She shakes her head, embarrassment flooding her at his continual approval, “Sure you-,”

“I really couldn’t,” he cuts her off. “You have a talent.”

Frowning now, she quirks a brow at him, “Aren’t you a Literature major?”

“I am,” he chuckles, making her breath stall in her throat. He has a beautiful, breathtaking laugh. “But only because it’s a challenge. In the military all that other shit was really important. Now it doesn’t have to be for me. So I’m doing something different.” He takes a deep breath then and seems to steel himself for something. “Listen, I’ve…I wanted to ask you out. I have for a long time. But I-I have problems with crowds, and uh, loud noises. And I want to be upfront about that. So-,”

“Yes,” she blurts out. “Yes, I’ll go out with you. I know it’s not the same but I like quiet too. It’s not a problem.”

He smiles then, “And maybe I’ll get to find out what happens to the ballerina and the soldier.”

Y/N leans closer and pushes him gently as she jokes, “And maybe I could get you to draw me.”

A charming smirk twists his lips and he flips to a different page of his notebook, past diagrams and sketches and equations and designs to stop on a portrait of Y/N. “Done. You’re too beautiful not to be someone’s muse.”

Although flattered Y/N ducks her head again and glances sideways at him. “Charmer,” she accuses softly.

“No,” he says. “Just the truth.” He pauses, eyes drifting over her features, “Wanna get out of here?”

Warmth spreads through her chest, “Yeah. I know this café. It’s small and quiet and it has these couches that are so soft it makes you want to stay there forever. It doesn’t have many people. And the corner I usually sit in is secluded-,”

“Sounds amazing, Y/N,” he says and she realizes she’d been rambling when he chuckles at her again. She stands and gathers her things, slipping her coat on when Bucky holds his hand out to her. “Little help?”

She takes his hand and helps tug him up before releasing him, turning away to grab her messenger bag. When she turns back he’s struggled into his coat and is swinging his backpack over his shoulder. His cheeks are blood red. Reaching up, he begins fidgeting with the strap of his backpack. “You don’t care about-,” he gestures to his clearly missing left arm.

Shock mars her features for a moment, “Of course not!”

He smiles and loops his arm behind her back and leads her toward the door. “Good. Now show me this introvert’s dream coffee shop.”


End file.
